BG Reads 11.30.2023

🗞️ BG Reads | News - November 30, 2023

November 30, 2023

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November 30, 2023

In today's BG Reads:

✅ Austin-San Antonio metro population projected to grow by more than 3 million by 2050

✅ Despite strong economy, Texas cities grapple with excess office space

More stories below. Read on!

[BINGHAM GROUP]

Converge Public Strategies Enters Strategic Alliance With Bingham Group

Miami, Florida and Austin, Texas - Miami, Florida-based Converge Public Strategies and Austin, Texas-based The Bingham Group, LLC have entered into a strategic alliance.

The strategic alliance adds to Converge’s significant public affairs and government relations capabilities by providing a strong presence at the local level in the Austin Metro market. Through the alliance, The Bingham Group’s clients will gain access to Converge’s multistate capabilities across the U.S., and its state and local capabilities in markets such as Florida, Illinois, and New York.

Jonathan Kilman, Chairman and CEO of Converge Public Strategies, said of the strategic alliance, “I’ve developed a great relationship with A.J. over the last few years, and I’ve watched his firm in Austin grow and thrive.

The clients we’ve referred to The Bingham Group rave about their relationships and execution. As a firm with extensive clients in the technology sector, we see Austin as a natural place to extend our capabilities, and The Bingham Group is a fantastic fit.”

[2024 Austin City Council Race Watch]

Next fall will see elections for the following Council positions, District 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, and Mayor.  Candidates can’t file for a place on the ballot until July 22, 2024.

Declared candidates so far are:

District 2

District 6

District 7 (Open seat)

District 10 (Open seat)

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Austin-San Antonio metro population projected to grow by more than 3 million by 2050 (KVUE)

Texas' two biggest metropolitan areas- Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) and Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land- could be getting a run for their money in the next few decades.

What’s being referred to as the Austin-San Antonio Metroplex is expected to grow by three million more people by 2050.

“By 2050, the region will have 8.3 million people,” Henry Cisneros, the former Mayor of San Antonio and former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton, said at an event hosted by the Texas Tribune on Wednesday. “We're going to grow by three million more people between the northern parts of Austin, through Austin, San Marcos, New Braunfels and San Antonio.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Council to consider public safety stations as community benefit eligible for density bonuses (Austin Monitor)

City Council will consider adding public safety space – like fire, police and EMS stations – as a community benefit eligible for density bonus programs and planned unit developments (PUD) at its meeting on Thursday.

District 6 Council Member Mackenzie Kelly sponsored the resolution, which would direct the city manager “to explore, as part of the comprehensive review of density bonus programs, how providing space for public safety purposes could be included as an element … and to return to Council with recommendations,” according to draft language. The resolution also would direct the city manager to explore how such space might qualify for a PUD designation.

Council members Chito Vela, Ryan Alter and José Velásquez are co-sponsors… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

NXP Semiconductors seeks state incentives for $291M Austin project (Austin Business Journal)

NXP Semiconductors NV is seeking more than $1 million in tax refunds from the state as the chipmaker plans to invest millions into its Austin facilities.

NXP USA Inc., a subsidiary of the Netherlands-based NXP (Nasdaq: NXPI), is pursuing a nomination from the city of Austin to seek designation under the Texas Enterprise Zone program. The state program would open the door for the company to receive state tax rebates for its upcoming investment into Central Texas' manufacturing economy.

Austin City Council is set to vote on a resolution nominating NXP for the program during its Nov. 30 meeting… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Need for county mental health diversion center grows (Austin Monitor)

Travis County’s mental and behavioral health diversion center is more than five years from opening and needed more every day, the Commissioners Court learned Tuesday. 

With an epidemic of mental illness and an overcrowded Travis County Jail, commissioners said the county must build the center as quickly as possible while involving relevant community groups. The project also includes a new central booking facility for the jail. 

Commissioners voted in March to create the new center based on recommendations from Dell Medical School. In Travis County, 37 percent of people incarcerated in October 2021 were receiving mental health care in jail, the medical school reported. By May 2022, the rate had increased to 42 percent… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Despite strong economy, Texas cities grapple with excess office space (Texas Tribune)

Texas office workers are back in person more than their counterparts across the country — but a lot of the state’s urban office space is still sitting empty.

The Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston areas have office vacancy rates that range from 21% to 25%, vacancies that could complicate the post-pandemic recoveries of downtown areas, which depend on office workers to support restaurants and retail businesses. But whether the glut of space at a time when developers are continuing to construct more office buildings foreshadows a brewing economic storm remains to be seen.

“Is it soft? Yes. Is it a challenge? Yes. Is there a crash coming? I would not say that that’s the situation we are in,” said Julie Whelan, who heads a research team that studies trends in commercial real estate for the firm CBRE Group… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Texas Supreme Court appears hesitant to clarify emergency exception in state's abortion ban (Houston Chronicle)

Several of the Texas Supreme Court’s Republican justices appeared hesitant on Tuesday to clarify an emergency exception in the state’s abortion ban despite claims from nearly two dozen women that they were forced to continue medically dangerous pregnancies. “Our job is to decide cases, not to elaborate and expand laws in order to make them easier to understand or enforce,” Justice Brett Busby said. The case was initially filed in March by five women — a number that has since ballooned to 22 as more plaintiffs have been added — who say they were denied abortions despite having dangerous or unviable pregnancies. They say their doctors feared violating the law, which could result in lengthy prison sentences, tens of thousands in fines and the loss of their medical licenses.

Unlike other litigation, their lawsuit is not trying to overturn the Texas ban or others like it, but instead clarify exactly how physicians can provide abortions during dangerous or unviable pregnancies. The ban currently allows the procedure only when there is a “substantial” risk to a mother. Lawyers with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing the women, say the exception is overly vague and that the lack of care their clients received violates the Texas Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights regardless of sex, among other provisions. The state’s attorneys, meanwhile, argue that doctors are at fault for failing to intervene in each of the cases, not the law, and that the women don’t have the right to sue the state because they’re not actively in danger. Justice Jeff Boyd said he was having trouble understanding the state’s argument about the women’s right to sue, pointing to one of them, Amanda Zurawski, who developed sepsis while her doctor made her wait for an abortion. Because of her complications, Zurawski will likely not be able to conceive again without medical intervention. “Why doesn’t she have standing to say, ‘Hey, we need someone to tell us what this statue means so that … I know what my rights are going forward, and my doctor knows what he or she can do moving forward’?” he asked… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson to give annual state of the city speech over the radio (Dallas Morning News)

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson says he’ll deliver his latest state of the city address this week over the radio, a departure from him giving the annual speech in-person inside a venue. The mayor’s address is scheduled to be broadcasted Thursday evening on WBAP News/Talk 820 AM and 99.5 FM-HD2. It’s not clear why a radio format was chosen or why the speech will be broadcasted on WBAP, which broadcasts on both frequencies. Alheli Garza,Johnson’s chief of state, said Tuesday that there are no alternative broadcast options to experience the speech and that the audio will also be streamed on WBAP’s website. She didn’t immediately respond to questions Tuesday on why Johnson chose to give the speech via the radio or whether it will be read live on-air or pre-recorded.

The city owns a separate station, WRR-FM (101.1), which has been managed by public television and radio operator KERA since last year. Outside of that, Catherine Cuellar, Dallas’ director of communications, outreach and marketing, told The Dallas Morning News that the city has the capability to broadcast or stream the speech. The City Charter requires the mayor to give a yearly report to the public on Dallas’ accomplishments, financial condition as well as future plans and needs. Prior mayors, including Johnson’s immediate predecessor Mayor Mike Rawlings, have delivered their yearly address to the Dallas Regional Chamber during an event not publicly broadcasted at all. But other than his first speech months after being elected in 2019, Johnson has given the address in-person during events broadcasted by the city. “Mayor Johnson has made it his goal to deliver the annual remarks in a public way — returning the address to its roots — rather than during a private luncheon with business leaders,” read a mayor’s office news release announcing Johnson’s 2021 state of the city address. Johnson has delivered the address twice from Fair Park: in 2020 from the Hall of State in a virtual address and from the Briscoe-Carpenter building in front of a crowd last year… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Ford, dies at 100 (Associated Press)

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the diplomat with the thick glasses and gravelly voice who dominated foreign policy as the United States extricated itself from Vietnam and broke down barriers with China, died Wednesday, his consulting firm said. He was 100.

With his gruff yet commanding presence and behind-the-scenes manipulation of power, Kissinger exerted uncommon influence on global affairs under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, earning both vilification and the Nobel Peace Prize. Decades later, his name still provoked impassioned debate over foreign policy landmarks long past.

Kissinger’s power grew during the turmoil of Watergate, when the politically attuned diplomat assumed a role akin to co-president to the weakened Nixon.

A Jew who fled Nazi Germany with his family in his teens, Kissinger in his later years cultivated the reputation of respected statesman, giving speeches, offering advice to Republicans and Democrats alike and managing a global consulting business. He turned up in President Donald Trump’s White House on multiple occasions. But Nixon-era documents and tapes, as they trickled out over the years, brought revelations — many in Kissinger’s own words — that sometimes cast him in a harsh light.

Never without his detractors, Kissinger after he left government was dogged by critics who argued that he should be called to account for his policies on Southeast Asia and support of repressive regimes in Latin America… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Supreme Court weighs Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement power (NBC News)

The Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear a broad legal attack on the Securities and Exchange Commission, giving the conservative majority another chance to curb the power of federal agencies. The case is one of three on the Supreme Court's docket considering what has been broadly described as an attack on the administrative state led by conservative groups and business interests. The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has frequently been supportive of such efforts. The challenge focuses on the power the SEC has to enforce securities laws, including those prohibiting insider trading. The SEC uses in-house proceedings presided over by administrative law judges or sues in federal court. In both sets of proceedings, it can seek financial penalties. Those subject to the in-house proceedings have bristled, saying they violate their rights and give the SEC too much power by essentially creating a home-court advantage.

One critic is hedge fund manager George Jarkesy, who brought the legal challenge after he faced SEC claims that he violated securities laws by making misstatements and omitting relevant information in communications with investors while he was overseeing two hedge funds. “It is widely recognized that the SEC virtually always wins in its own home courts,” Jarkesy’s lawyers said in court filings. After an in-house proceeding in 2014, Jarkesy and his firm were ordered to pay a $300,000 penalty, and he was barred from certain roles in the securities industry. The firm was also ordered to return nearly $685,000 in what the SEC considered "illicit gains." Jarkesy's legal crusade has the backing of billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Cuban. The case raises three weighty constitutional questions that could weaken the SEC's powers, at least when it comes to the in-house proceedings. One is whether the adjudication of cases by the in-house judges violates the right to trial by jury under the Constitution's Seventh Amendment… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Charlie Munger and the Art of Being No. 2 (Wall Street Journal)

Charlie Munger was Robin to Warren Buffett’s Batman, a business equivalent of the Edge rocking with the Bono of investing.

Munger, who died Tuesday at age 99, played one of the toughest roles in the corporate (or any) world: No. 2. 

Succeeding as second in command takes a rare blend of confidence and humility, say people who’ve done it. The consummate right-hand person must be devoted to organizational success while accepting that someone else’s star will always shine brighter.

At a time when many American workers are reconsidering whether the race to the top is worth running at all, Munger’s apparent satisfaction with being the ultimate sidekick could be a model. 

It helped that Warren and Charlie, as the duo was known, shared a personal friendship. And being a wingman is presumably more fun when you’re a billionaire, as Munger was. Most important, say those who knew him: Munger knew he was respected and appreciated.

Buffett made sure of it.

Harry Kraemer, former chief executive of the healthcare company Baxter International, recalls a conversation with Buffett at a CEO gathering around the year 2000: “I said, ‘Boy, you’ve got an amazing track record.’ And he goes, ‘It isn’t just me. Never mention my name without Charlie’s.’”

In a recent annual letter, Buffett wrote: “I never have a phone call with Charlie without learning something.”

There aren’t many pairs like Buffett and Munger. An analog might be the late Canadian telecom mogul Ted Rogers and his longtime lieutenant, Phil Lind, who died in August at age 80. Robert Brehl, who co-wrote Lind’s 2018 memoir, “Right Hand Man,” says loyalty is essential to a relationship like Rogers-Lind or Buffett-Munger. 

Having complementary strengths and interests helps ward off resentment, Brehl adds… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

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